Let's Talk Computer Audio

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Hi Vincent

I've been in this hobby for 50 years and have seen and heard just about everything along the way including the use of a computer for audio. I must tell you that early in my involvement in the hobby I spun vinyl and then R2R and finally the little silver disk. I have a reasonably large collection of CD's but have never ripped them to my hard drive with a view to getting into computer based audio. IOW I don't mind getting up and changing disks etc

The digital age is clearly upon us and I am certain the days of the silver disk are numbered as more and more files will be downloaded on line, as well as ripping my CD's to my hard drive.

Needless to say, I am a newbie to the subject so I couldn't think of anyone better than you to ask the following....

I am a Mac user althoughI certainly have a PC available but my druthers is Mac, so let's talk about the use of a computer for audio. Everything from soup to nuts. What requirements in a computer, sound cards, memory, high res files etc, etc. You get my drift

Not only will this get me up and running but I am hoping that this thread if it goes smoothly can be bookmarked as a reference for future readers. If you feel comfortable with the topic Vincent, if we are going to make this a bookmark for future reference I think it becomes imperative therefore to discuss both PC and MAC.

For anyone reading this thread and have your own system, I know there are many ways to skin a cat but let's allow Vincent to answer first to give us an idea of where he wants to go with it

Hopefully Vincent will discuss all the different players available as either as software or a standalone unit.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Steve.... let me weigh in on this.
I have to set up 2 rooms at Newport with a laptop/DAC and external hard drive. I'm not a big MAC person and one of the rooms I have to set up for, the vendor wanted a MAC system. I asked around and did a lot of reading.
I have 2 large hard drives with mostly DSD material and some PCM so I needed a software that would play both without a hiccup. I am using a Mytek Stereo192/DSD DAC. The recommendation I got was to use FW with this on a MAC.
I was starting to get a little anxious because I didn't have a lot of time to learn a new software program. I downloaded Audirvana, installed and purchased the license. I set it up by the instructions on the Mytek site and in less than an hour, I had 4TB of hi-rez files at my fingertips using an iPad controlling the laptop. As fast as I can click on a song, it starts playing. I can jump from DSD to PCM and back without a hitch.

It went so well, I decided to try my Playback Designs MSP-5. I got that up and running within 10 minutes!

The second laptop I had to set up was a Win 7 machine, also using the Mytek. I chose JRiver as my software and using USB 2.0 It's been almost 2hr and I haven't gotten it to play correctly yet. I'm sold on using a MAC laptop for streaming hi-rez files.

I've been a diehard PC user since the beginning, but for everything I'm doing now, it just seems easier to set things up on a MAC. And the clincher? I can't tell if Audirvana is playing or my multi-thousand $$ software. It's a no-brainer!
 

Vincent Kars

WBF Technical Expert: Computer Audio
Jul 1, 2010
860
1
0
Hi Steve

If you are an OSX user, stick to it.
Mastering using the computer as a source for audio and mastering a completely different OS at the same time is for masochist only.
I have never seen any evidence that one is better for audio than the other.

As you are on a Mac and I on Win (don’t own any iSomething) I can’t help you much with the specifics.

IMHO using a computer as a source for audio does have a couple of advantages.
An obvious one is the interface.
Being able to browse and search your collection is a great asset.
You can browse, search and sort it in many ways, by artist, album, song, composer, year, genre, to mention the most important tags.
It beats flipping through a large collection of CDs.

An obvious advantage is you are no longer tied to a single format, the 16/44.1 kHz redbook standard.
Why listening to down-sampled music if you can get the original studio master in e.g. 24/96?

A music collection is not only a substantial financial investment but also has a strong emotional value. Having all of it on a HD allows you to make a backup.
As terabytes are cheap today, you make another one and store it outside the home, be it in the office, a relative or in the cloud.
They might burn your house, even step on your blue suede shoes but you collection is save.
 

Julf

New Member
Nov 27, 2011
613
0
0
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
as well as ripping my CD's to my hard drive.

As that can be a major project (depending on the size of your CD collection), it is something you don't want to have to redo. There are a few things to watch out for:

- Make sure you rip to a lossless format, that way you can always convert the music to another format if needed without any loss of sound quality.
- Use a ripping program that verifies the rip result with the accuraterip database or other similar service to make sure your rip was 100% perfect.
- Use a ripping program that gets the tagging metadata from MusicBrainz etc. - you want to get the metadata right from the start.

I am a Linux guy, so I don't really have specific recommendations for an Apple environment.
 

Vincent Kars

WBF Technical Expert: Computer Audio
Jul 1, 2010
860
1
0
You can use iTunes in secure mode.
It doesn’t support Accurate Rip but will do it right probably most of the time.

XLD (OSX) supports AccurateRip
Settings are discussed here

I am a dBpoweramp fanboy
  • It is fast and stable.
  • Easy to configure
  • It supports AccurateRip
  • Meta data from AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz and FreeDB
  • Also a reliable format converter


Yeah, it is Win
 

Julf

New Member
Nov 27, 2011
613
0
0
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Vincent

for my clarification, you are suggesting that I use a different program to rip my CD's than what my computer provides, correct...Accurate Rip. Is this a download or where do I find it


Does Audirvana play hi res files as well or is something else needed.Seems Amarra plays up to 192

I also notice that JRiver will support Mac by the end of this year. Will that be the way to go
 

RBFC

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
5,158
46
1,225
Albuquerque, NM
www.fightingconcepts.com
Vincent

for my clarification, you are suggesting that I use a different program to rip my CD's than what my computer provides, correct...Accurate Rip. Is this a download or where do I find it


Does Audirvana play hi res files as well or is something else needed.Seems Amarra plays up to 192

I also notice that JRiver will support Mac by the end of this year. Will that be the way to go


Steve,

XLD is a free download program that uses accurate rip verification. I use it on my Mac. It also uses a couple of the metadata programs to provide cover art, liner notes, and song titles within albums.

The latest version of Amarra I know of will support 384kHz sampling rate files. Others will have to chime in about DSD, since my DAC doesn't support that.

Lee
 

Andre Marc

Member Sponsor
Mar 14, 2012
3,970
7
0
San Diego
www.avrev.com
Steve.... let me weigh in on this.
I have to set up 2 rooms at Newport with a laptop/DAC and external hard drive. I'm not a big MAC person and one of the rooms I have to set up for, the vendor wanted a MAC system. I asked around and did a lot of reading.
I have 2 large hard drives with mostly DSD material and some PCM so I needed a software that would play both without a hiccup. I am using a Mytek Stereo192/DSD DAC. The recommendation I got was to use FW with this on a MAC.
I was starting to get a little anxious because I didn't have a lot of time to learn a new software program. I downloaded Audirvana, installed and purchased the license. I set it up by the instructions on the Mytek site and in less than an hour, I had 4TB of hi-rez files at my fingertips using an iPad controlling the laptop. As fast as I can click on a song, it starts playing. I can jump from DSD to PCM and back without a hitch.

It went so well, I decided to try my Playback Designs MSP-5. I got that up and running within 10 minutes!

The second laptop I had to set up was a Win 7 machine, also using the Mytek. I chose JRiver as my software and using USB 2.0 It's been almost 2hr and I haven't gotten it to play correctly yet. I'm sold on using a MAC laptop for streaming hi-rez files.

I've been a diehard PC user since the beginning, but for everything I'm doing now, it just seems easier to set things up on a MAC. And the clincher? I can't tell if Audirvana is playing or my multi-thousand $$ software. It's a no-brainer!

Bruce, for the record, I was able to play DSD files on Jriver with the MyTek in 3 minutes, with zero issues.
 

Peter Breuninger

[Industry Expert] Member Sponsor
Jul 20, 2010
1,231
4
0
Bruce,

What rooms are you doing?


Steve.... let me weigh in on this.
I have to set up 2 rooms at Newport with a laptop/DAC and external hard drive. I'm not a big MAC person and one of the rooms I have to set up for, the vendor wanted a MAC system. I asked around and did a lot of reading.
I have 2 large hard drives with mostly DSD material and some PCM so I needed a software that would play both without a hiccup. I am using a Mytek Stereo192/DSD DAC. The recommendation I got was to use FW with this on a MAC.
I was starting to get a little anxious because I didn't have a lot of time to learn a new software program. I downloaded Audirvana, installed and purchased the license. I set it up by the instructions on the Mytek site and in less than an hour, I had 4TB of hi-rez files at my fingertips using an iPad controlling the laptop. As fast as I can click on a song, it starts playing. I can jump from DSD to PCM and back without a hitch.

It went so well, I decided to try my Playback Designs MSP-5. I got that up and running within 10 minutes!

The second laptop I had to set up was a Win 7 machine, also using the Mytek. I chose JRiver as my software and using USB 2.0 It's been almost 2hr and I haven't gotten it to play correctly yet. I'm sold on using a MAC laptop for streaming hi-rez files.

I've been a diehard PC user since the beginning, but for everything I'm doing now, it just seems easier to set things up on a MAC. And the clincher? I can't tell if Audirvana is playing or my multi-thousand $$ software. It's a no-brainer!
 

Andre Marc

Member Sponsor
Mar 14, 2012
3,970
7
0
San Diego
www.avrev.com
how about waiting for end of year when JRiver will support Mac

Skip it. Their user base is PC, and that is where they are going to allocate their resources for updates and support.

There is already a large user base for Audirvana and Pure Music. Also remember, for cataloging, you need to integrate
both these programs with iTunes. To the best of my knowledge, neither one offers a cataloging feature.

The only thing I don't like is that those two programs are they one man shows as far as I know.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Is Audirvana the program to use? Isn't Pure Music Mac based as well

I'm using Audirvana to play any PCM and DSD sample rate. I haven't worked with Pure. I know that Pure makes more than 1 program (vinyl ripping?). I just needed something simple for playback and seems I've found it. So far, it's been playing constantly for 30+ hours.

I'll be playing Audirvana with a Mytek in my room at Newport. Stop by and I can show you how easy it is.
 

Andre Marc

Member Sponsor
Mar 14, 2012
3,970
7
0
San Diego
www.avrev.com
I'm using Audirvana to play any PCM and DSD sample rate. I haven't worked with Pure. I know that Pure makes more than 1 program (vinyl ripping?). I just needed something simple for playback and seems I've found it. So far, it's been playing constantly for 30+ hours.

I'll be playing Audirvana with a Mytek in my room at Newport. Stop by and I can show you how easy it is.

Bruce, does Audirvana Plus have a cataloging feature? As far as I know it does not unless integrated with iTunes.....
 

docvale

Well-Known Member
Mar 21, 2011
542
53
940
Briarcliff Manor, NY
Steve,

you'll definitely won't regret to switch to computer audio. I've played around for a while, now, and I can tell you the the ease of using a mac (connected to the DAC through USB) with iTunes+PureMusic, remotely driven by an iPad, is a pleasure. Once you try something like this (nothing difficult to set, superaffordable), the need to get a dedicated music server (don't need to list the companies) becomes unnecessary.
With regards to the rip, I would make a unique recommendation: if you want to share your music library with other devices, ripping in FLAC would jeopardize that flexibility.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Bruce, does Audirvana Plus have a cataloging feature? As far as I know it does not unless integrated with iTunes.....

I haven't gotten that far. I don't think so. I just needed to click on a song and let it play. Simple.

Andre, I'm having trouble going back and forth playing PCM and DSD. Playing all PCM or all DSD is fine.

Peter, I'll be in the "Systems Design Group and the PTE/Antelope rooms. Greg and a couple others will be playing our master tapes as well.
 

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